5 Centimeters per Second DVD 2 Disc

Since the release of his award-winning short Voices From a Distant Star in 2002, visionary animator Shinkai Makoto has been earmarked as the future of Japanese animation, the next Miyazaki. Though these are no easy expectations to live up to, Shinkai has shown that the hype is well deserved with his 2004 follow-up The Place Promised Our Early Days and now Byosoku 5 Centimeter, a.k.a. a chain of short stories about their distance. The Japanese title, "5 Centimeters Per Second", refers to the speed at which cherry blossoms fall to the ground, a fitting image of the film's delicate, lyrical splendor. Byosoku 5 Centimeter continues with the soft, dreamy aesthetic and bittersweet adolescent sentiments of Shinkai's previous works, but this time he moves away from the sci-fi themes, reveling in the lingering beauty of the everyday. Split into three episodes, Byosoku 5 Centimeter follows the tender romance and coming-of-age of Takaki and Akari. They first meet as fourth-graders, lonely so